Living in Ryazan and Traveling to Vladimir and Suzdal
When I arrived in Ryazan I was scheduled to stay at the Ryazan State Teacher Retraining University Hotel, but they did not have room. Also, my luggage did not arrive in Moscow, so I stayed with Elena Biryukova and her husband, Alexander in their apartment. Their apartment building is shown at the left at the right of the photo. The apartment is on Tsiolkovsky Street adjacent to a recently restored Russian Orthodox Church.
Elena Biryukova is a geography/ecology professor at Ryazan State Pedagogical University. While I was in Ryazan, she had scheduled a three day trip to the city of Vladimir which is the ancient capital city of the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality. So, I tagged along with the group of 20 university students. We stayed in a university dormitory. My room is shown at the left.
The three photos above are of Elena Biryukova's students. The photo at the left was taken under Vladimir's Golden Gate which was built in 1164. The middle photo was taken in a wooden structure in the Museum of Wooden Architecture and Peasant Daily Life in Suzdal. The photo on the right was taken near the previous photo. The trip to Vladimir took five hours by university bus so I had a good chance to associate with these students. They are wonderful, young Russian people. I really enjoyed getting to know them and participating with them on this class excursion.
Vladimir is a very interesting and old city. The left photo is the Dormition Cathedral, built between 1158 and 1160. It is the chief place of worship in the city and served as a model for the Dormition Cathedral build later in the Moscow Kremlin. This cathedral once housed the very famous icon, the Virgin of Vladimir, which is now in Moscow in the Tretyakov Gallery. In the center is the Cathedral of St. Demetrius built between 1194 and 1197. What sets this building apart is its extremely rich white-stone carvings on the exterior. On the right is a monument to the founders of Vladimir, Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavish and Vladimir Monomakh.
The three photo above are of the city of Vladimir and the Klyazma River Valley. The city of Vladimir was established in either 990 or 1108, depending upon which source one accepts. It was located strategically on a high bluff of the Klyazma River - a major east-west corridor between the Volga River to the north and the Oka River to the south. The photo on the left is one which shows a few buildings on the bluff of the river. The middle photo is looking west toward Moscow and contains the Klyazma River. The photo on the right is the main bridge coming from the south. When we traveled from Ryazan to Vladimir, we came from the south through the beautiful Meshchora Lowlands and we crossed this bridge over the Klyazma River as we entered the city.
